


White Flowers

by pifflapodus_scriptor



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: Angst, Gen, hella angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-03
Updated: 2012-08-03
Packaged: 2017-11-11 09:11:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 923
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/476934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pifflapodus_scriptor/pseuds/pifflapodus_scriptor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mako and Bolin visit their parents' grave, or at least the one Mako made up when he was 8.</p>
            </blockquote>





	White Flowers

**Author's Note:**

> This is from the Legend of Korra ficathon happening over on LJ right now.

Our parents are burned twice. The first is in an alleyway, which we can’t help but remember, and the second is in a furnace, which we choose to forget, because it cuts deep to know that your parents must be buried in themselves, there are no graves for people like you. We tried to carry the urn with us, we did, we really tried; but we only made it to the first winter until Bolin’s cheeks hollowed out and his ribs were like nails under thin leather and I came down with a cough that jerked and tore my lungs. I would tell him that I was going to get food but instead I’d cry in the metro station because I was so angry that they’d gone and left us, I was _so angry_. And I was going to sell that damn fucking urn because you can’t eat sentimentality, you can't hold on to it forever and _we_ had to hold on without them; and then I was going to stuff Bolin with so much food that he’d get fat and sleep through the winter like a platypus bear. Then, maybe, I could rest easy until the spring. The thought was sweeter than candy.

But where, I thought, where do I leave them? No one place in the city is good enough.

So one day we sneak into the Republic City Skytree (I tell Bolin it’s a castle and his eyes get all round and wet and he asks if there’s a princess inside, I tell him _yes and the security guard is a dragon, so don’t let him see you_ ) and I pad the lining of his coat and mine with newspapers nicked from the trash because it’s cold at the top and about to snow, and a sneeze would tear through the fabric without a second thought. His face is pink and raw and there’s a streak of dirt so I thumb it off and slick his hair back as best I can. He at least has to be _presentable_.

Almost no one is at the top of the tower because it’s late afternoon and the sky is a rolling dark grey and the ocean is slate; but the tower is lit up and golden like a flame made solid and at least it’s pretty, shining in the sky like that. So I lift Bolin, stiff and bundled, onto one of the telescope blocks, shove my last half a yuan (in other words, four dumplings) into the coin slot, and tell him to look for the statue of that Fire Lord stiff. And while he’s distracted, standing on tiptoes and squeaking with effort trying to swing the telescope around, I kneel under the railing, uncover the urn, and pour the ashes out. They make a silky noise as they slide out and feather on the wind, a smudged brushstroke in the air, and I follow the breeze as long as I can until I make sure it’s all gone, they’re all gone, and the urn is just a dead weight I can drop without regrets. I don’t regret it.

I hawk it at a pawnshop (their names weren’t on it, and it was a decent quality pewter, some flowers and things engraved) and I stretch it into a hat for Bolin and then eight, nine, ten bowls of noodles in broth, and each time I make him eat the sprouts _and_ the bamboo - _don’t complain ‘cause I’m not buying you anything else later._ It feels good to let the urn go. I feel freer, lighter. I can do this. I tell Bolin at some point, because he remembers the urn, and he asks about it, and by then he’s old enough to just understand why I did it and shrug. He just asks _so now they’re all over the city?_ And I say _yes, they’re everywhere, on the streets and in the buildings and all over the parks, they’re around us all the time._

Now we go to the top of the Skytree every winter and we go carrying white flowers and silence. Bolin and I like to sit there for a while, looking down onto the city as it glows and hums restlessly, turning over and over, watching the boats in the harbor glitter on the water and the metros cross under the bridges like beads of light sliding on a wire, and this is when they’re everywhere, when the city is plunged in sound, when it sprawls before us, an asphalt clot, a glutted mess of bricks and cables, and teeming with people, so many people, it’s just dusted with people. And they’re everywhere – they’re the couple down below buying paper packets of roasted almonds from the street vendor, the light flickering on in that seventh-floor apartment, and the dancers in the plaza, twirling on aching, graceful feet to the musicians' beat. They are in our hands and in our bones.

We have our flowers and I take each one and hold it over the edge and set it on fire; the petals wither and dry and eat themselves away with red-hot teeth, and they ash as I drop them into the breeze. And we burn our words, too; turn those to ash and let the wind catch them - _Mom, Dad, we miss you_ and _we love you_ and _guess what Mako’s a cop now_ and sometimes, this one I keep to myself, I save it for last: _I held on for another year_. And I'm still holding on.


End file.
